On Easter Sunday of 2008, 11-year-old Kara Neumann of Weston, Wisconsin,
suffered waves of nausea as she lay motionless on her deathbed, too weak to
walk or speak. Kara's parents  both followers of the Unleavened Bread
Ministries, an online church that shuns medical intervention  knelt in
prayer beside their dying daughter. They did not call a doctor for help. A
few hours later, Kara died of diabetes, a relatively common  and treatable
 condition.

Within weeks, a Wisconsin state attorney brought charges of reckless
endangerment against Kara's parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann. The couple
protested on grounds of religious freedom, but Judge Vincent Howard of
Marathon County Circuit Court ordered Mr. and Mrs. Neumann to stand trial
this spring. If convicted, each faces up to 25 years in prison. Unleavened
Bread Ministries immediately released a statement saying the couple is being
unfairly punished for the "crime of praying." (Read the top 10 religion stories of 2008.)

The Neumanns' highly anticipated trial has sparked new debate in a
long-running battle over faith healing in the United States. Under current
Wisconsin law, a parent cannot be convicted of child abuse or negligent
homicide if they can prove they genuinely believed that calling God, instead
of a doctor, was the best option available for their child. The law is part
of the legacy of the 1996 Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which
included a landmark exemption for parents who do not seek medical care for
their children for religious purposes. While all states give social service
authorities the right to intervene in cases of child neglect, criminal codes
in 29 other states also provide additional protection for parents who forgo
mainstream medical treatment. (Read TIME's cover story on God vs. Science.)

In light of Kara's high-profile case, faith-healing communities around
the country are worried about losing their right to treat their children
according to their religious beliefs. "The way the law is worded right now
is confusing and makes it seem like we have a shield to recklessly endanger
children," says Joe Farkas, legislative affairs representative for the
Church of Christ, Scientist, in Wisconsin. The Church has teamed up with
Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Lena Taylor to write new legislation that could
repeal a provision in the state's child abuse and neglect statute that
exempts parents from prosecution in some faith-healing cases, while creating
a new "affirmative defense" for parents who made a "reasonable attempt" to
provide medical care for their child. "We want to have an affirmative
defense where parents relying on Christian Science treatment are given a
fair opportunity to explain why they believed their action was in the best
interest of their child," says Farkas. "Our church loves children and we
want to protect children."

Religious objections to medical treatment have historical roots that can
be traced back to the late 1800s in England, when a sect called the Peculiar
People ended up on trial for allowing generations of children to die as a
result of their decision to reject doctors and medicine. Today, many
religious groups routinely reject some or all mainstream health care on theological grounds, including Christian Scientists,
Jehovah's Witnesses, Amish and Scientologists. "Fundamentalists tell us
their lives are in the hands of God and we, as physicians, are not God,"
says Dr. Lorry Frankel, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine and
author of Ethical Dilemmas in Pediatrics. "We respect people's
religious beliefs and try to compromise, but we won't deny treatment that
will save lives." Frankel says he's taken Jehovah's Witnesses to court in
the past when they've refused blood transfusion for their children in
life-threatening cases. "The judge invariably rules in our favor and I've
never had a child denied care," says Frankel.

Nobody knows exactly how many children's health problems are exacerbated
by a parent's religious beliefs because "the system can only kick in if
people become aware that a sick child is not getting care," says Dr. Sara
Sinal who co-authored a July 2008 article on religion-based medical neglect
in Southern Medical Journal. "It is suspected that many deaths go
unreported and unrecognized, particularly in closed communities." Former
Christian Scientist Rita Swan, executive director of the nonprofit
Children's Health Care Is A Legal Duty, estimates that since the 1980s 300 children have died of "religion-based medical neglect" in the
United States. Shawn F. Peters, author of the 2007 book When Prayer
Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law calls the situation an
unfolding tragedy. "Americans treasure religious liberty and it's one of our
bedrock freedoms," says Peters. "Most of us realize that there have to be
some limits to such freedoms."

Deciding just what those limits are has increasingly become a matter for
the state courts, with most judges coming down on the side of doctors like
Frankel when young lives are at stake. In December, an upstate New York
judge ordered two Amish parents to allow an operation needed to repair their
infant's life-threatening heart condition despite their religious objections
to the procedure. Earlier in January, a judge refused to drop criminal
charges against a couple in Oregon charged with second-degree manslaughter
and criminal mistreatment in the death of their 15-month-old daughter who
would have survived had she received antibiotics, rejecting their argument
that prosecution would violate their religious freedom and parental rights.
Last year, another Oregon couple were charged with criminally
negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year-old son, who died from
complications of a severely painful but easily treatable urinary tract
infection.

Christian Scientists maintain that seeking medical attention is a
personal decision and that the First Amendment protects their right to
believe that "God's infinite goodness, realized in prayer and action,
heals," as noted on the website of the The Church of Christ, Scientist. But
a long list of major U.S. organizations have already called for repealing of
existing religious exemptions, including the American Academy of Pediatrics
and the American Medical Association. "Too often, deference to religion in
contemporary American society has resulted in us subordinating all other
values," says Dr. Richard Sloan, professor of psychiatry at Columbia
Presbyterian Hospital. "The law must recognize that the right of children to
live supersedes the rights of their parents to free expression of
religion."